The present invention relates to messaging servers. More specifically, the present invention relates to methods for dynamically changing the language used by messaging servers. Typical messaging servers provide users audio and/or textual output and the like.
It has been said that the computer age has brought users of different nationalities throughout the world closer than ever before. However, this seems to only be true if the user speaks English. In reality, the majority of the people on this world read, write, and speak in different languages. Because of these language differences, products that are destined for international markets must speak the local language to be successful.
In the past, computer applications were written using English as the language for communicating with the user. For example, for textual output, for audio output, and the like. In order to modify the computer application to operate with another human language, the application had to first be re-written with user messages in the other language. Next, the application had to be re-compiled and tested.
Drawbacks to this method include that the company writing the computer program was required to re-compile the program for every language desired, and that they had to release specific versions of the program for each language. Another drawback was that the time-to-market for the computer program would suffer because re-compiling and re-testing was often a time consuming process.
In order to address the above problems, an alternative method was developed. In this method, user messages were written in as many different languages as possible and then computer program was compiled. As a result, a user of the computer program could switch back and forth from different languages without having different versions of the program. Typical source code of computer programs having the all-in-one approach could resemble the following code:
If (language=ENGLISH) then PA1 Else if (language=JAPANESE) then PA1 Else if (language=German ) . . .
Play_English_Prompt ("you have") PA2 Play_English_Number(&lt;number&gt;) PA2 Play_English_Prompt("e-mail messages") PA2 Play_Japanese_Number(&lt;number&gt;) PA2 Play_Japanese_Prompt("e-mail messages") PA2 Play_Japanese_Prompt("you have")
Drawbacks to this approach include that such all-in-one applications typically require excessive amounts of computer storage space. For example, because most users in the United States will only use the English language when running a computer program, the instruction codes and the capability to use other languages is never used. As a result, a great deal of RAM and Hard Disk requirements for a computer program is wasted. Yet another drawback is that if any new languages are to be added to the computer program, the entire computer program must still be recompiled. Another drawback to this approach was that it was very error prone, because minor changes meant updating all versions of the program.
In light of the above, what is needed are efficient methods for dynamically configuring messaging servers for different languages.